Category: Sea & Coast

Late Spring Seabird Blog

17/6/2016

by Robin Noble

The constantly changing weather is making planning ahead quite difficult, but the sea is definitely warming up, and so the boating season is firmly underway. I have remarked before that I do not understand why we should have so few seabirds (although there seem to be more gulls about this year), when there is certainly no shortage of fish. However, from time to time something interesting quite literally appears on the horizon.

We were out one day last week when we saw a low, planing flight over the sea, dark against the sombre water on a day of oily calm or occasional slight swell. It was immediately evocative for both of us; we are familiar with the manx shearwater which nests on the dramatic island of Rum in the Small Isles off Scotland's West Coast, and this clearly had to belong to the same family, which includes the bulkier fulmar with which some readers may be more familiar. We went in the direction of the bird we had seen, and as we got closer, it turned out that there were, ultimately, six of them, as well as one immature gannet; this was, interestingly, often followed by one of the other birds.

As we got nearer and switched off the motor, the birds began to circle around the boat at intervals, and it became clear that these were definitely shearwaters, but of a type we had not seen before. They were perhaps larger, at least longer-winged than a fulmar, but much slimmer, more like a larger version of the manx, but definitely brownish on the back and wing. There was also a conspicuous, narrow, white band above the short, dark tail, and the birds had a dark cap above a pale throat and white breast. Having noted these main characteristics, we sat entranced, as they flew around us, skimming the surface of the sea in a long, low, undulating flight. We could see quite clearly the complex tube-nose which all members of the petrel family possess, from the tiny storm petrel to the mighty albatross. I have recently read that it is now thought that this characteristic nose helps the bird gauge the air pressure as it passes over the waves.

Once home, it was out with the books and we were surprised how many possible candidates there were, including the balearic and Cory's shearwaters. But although the former are clearly rather more "local", we decided eventually that these were definitely the great (or greater!) shearwater, which really belongs to the Atlantic. Looking carefully at the illustrations, I have come to the conclusion that these were immature birds, non-breeders. The petrels do not breed until they are perhaps eight or nine years old; several of them seem to live to be at least forty. In those first years, they range all over the oceans of the world, and our birds had clearly opted for a Mediterranean break - and who can blame them?

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Up-and-down Blog

6/12/2015

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by Robin Noble

Especially if you have lived, as Martine and I have, in the far North of Scotland, you can find the climate here hard to believe; until well after the middle of November, the weather was better than the average British summer (let alone that of 2015!), and, over a short period, I decided I must take full advantage of it. The intention was to explore the extremes of our wonderful area, from (close to) the highest point, down to sea-level.

So, one weekend, I went up to the high foothills of Canigou, to the Tour de la Batere, one of our favourite places. It was comparatively busy, with a few of what I think are called para-gliders, and some spectators, which may be the reason why I saw no marmots. And there were almost no wildflowers, either, which was hardly surprising; the exception was one single gentian, small but vividly blue. The groups of horses, cows and sheep, all very discrete and self-contained, were roaming the hillsides, still grazing and maintaining the short turf which allows such flowers to flourish up here.

I had a lovely walk around, the air was brilliantly clear, but saw few birds apart from the occasional black redstart flitting between the rocks. When I returned to the car, a raven flew overhead, at first simply doing its usual “cronk, cronk“. Then the call speeded up, and sounded more alarmed, so I looked for it in the binoculars. What I could then see was that the raven, large and impressive ‘though it was, was being harried by a falcon of some sort. This bird did look surprisingly small beside the raven, but was quite heavy in build, anchor-shaped, and made repeated dives at the other. I came to the conclusion that it was a young peregrine, simply having fun, just trying out its skills at the expense of the larger bird. Had it been early summer, breeding-time, I am sure it would have been pursuing the raven with a vengeance, and I would have heard its high, angry, rasping call. I did wonder idly whether it would have a sally at the para-gliders, one of which was sailing silently by, but that never happened.

Alerted by Lesley that she had heard a distant group of cranes, I also made a few visits to the Etang, right down on the coast, (and, originally, presumably, an inlet of the sea). The weather, although still fine, was windy, and in such conditions, according to the invaluable Albera book, the cranes may shelter in the Etangs. From the hillock about which we were writing at the time of the spring migrations, you get a fine view over part of the water, the marshes proper, and some cut, but clearly wet, meadow, surely the perfect habitat for migrating cranes. So it may be, but on the occasions I visited, there were none to be seen or heard. The flamingos were tucked into the relative shelter of a bay, cormorants still flying around, herons lurking in the tall, marsh grasses, but there were no cranes. True, a most obliging, (and very dark) marsh harrier made its appearance, and I had wonderful views as it flew low over the long grasses and reeds.

I did in fact, one day, see a crane; a single bird, spotted briefly as I was driving to St. Nazaire and the hillock. I had a good enough view to be sure that it was a crane, and to speculate that it might be a juvenile, because of its rather indistinct markings, but it disappeared behind a hedge and that was the last I managed to see of it! Perhaps it was a young bird which had become separated from a larger, migrating group in the tramontane, or perhaps it was the last of a flock which was descending into a field beyond the impenetrable hedge - tantalising!

During one of these days by the Etang, I was reminded how attractive the most common birds can be. I was close to the Fishermen’s Huts across the water from the hillock, and it was very windy-as it so often seems to be there. Not much was visible apart from a small group of starlings, working their way over the ground, close to me. These were all adults, and I was reminded how dramatic their markings actually are when looked at closely. We take them for granted, perhaps, but they do look remarkably exotic when studied. Here's one that Isobel captured with her camera on a different day.

Now that something vaguely like winter has come, and there is snow on Canigou, the tits have come into the garden in some numbers, and the same is true of them, especially perhaps of the little blue tit, which is, in fact, much brighter than most books show; study it carefully, and you will come to the conclusion that it would not look out of place in the forests of Costa Rica. The commonplace can be astonishingly beautiful.

Thanks, again, to Isobel for this photo.

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End-of-Season Blog

2/10/2015

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by Robin Noble

Well, the first snows are high on Canigou, the weather is fresher, and for us the boating season is firmly over. It has been more mixed than usual this year, weather-wise, with a lot of wind and sometimes an impressive swell to cope with. Despite that, we have had some lovely days, and ventured a little bit further along the coast, both to the north and south.

The last few days at sea gave us some nice moments, and some interesting sightings; as ever, there were gulls and cormorants, as well as a few immature terns. Once again, we concluded that these were sandwich terns, despite the fact that they look rather chunkier than most books suggest. Strange that we never seem to see the adults. With them, we again once saw an immature gannet; even in the distance, its magnificent dives made it obvious. But as we have slowly increased our awareness of the richness of the life in this sea, we remain puzzled at the lack of seabirds – there are plenty of fish for them to feed on!

What we did see, at last, were dolphins; not the fabulous, breaching-all-around-the-boat vision of my dreams, but good, repeated views of two dolphins nonetheless. They did not leap high out of the shining sea, but we could see little variation in the dark grey of their bodies, and that, allied to their size, relatively restrained behaviour, and the fact that there were only two of them, convinced us that they were common bottle-nosed dolphins, a nice sighting with which to end the season.

But Martine also added to our list of things seen underwater; this was a strange creature, which we visited twice. It was a common sea cucumber, new to us, weird and spiky. According to the invaluable "Marine Wildlife of the Mediterranean", they are found "on shallow bottoms, covered in sand and seagrass, rich in organic matter. Spawns at dusk (which this was not), during summer, when it is easily spotted in a vertical position releasing eggs or sperm".

I shall only say that on our second visit, it had clearly performed this vital task, and had returned to its normal, probably rather unexciting, life.

And on land, one wonderful, end-of -season view: I was working inside one dull grey day when I heard, repeatedly, the familiar call of the bee-eater – lots of them. I grabbed the binoculars and ran outside to discover that on this one occasion, the birds were all around the house, flying low, sometimes even below me, landing briefly on trees and bushes in nearby gardens. In the dull conditions, not for once blinded by the sun, I could see their glorious colouring, and admire their excited flight around me, even seeing them catch and carry bees (presumably!) in their bills. Simply wonderful!

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Cool, Wet Blog

15/7/2015

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by Robin Noble & Photos by Martine Howard

After a late and turbulent spring, we seem to have progressed very quickly to a heatwave – or at least to what we, with less than three years' experience, certainly regard as a heatwave! It does not do the garden much good; seeds and plants, which were lovingly tended through the vagaries of the spring weather, now wilt, crisp and fry – and the gardener does much the same!

The obvious solution, as I have mentioned before, is to take to the Mediterranean, and spend days both on it, and, refreshingly, in it. We have launched both at Argelès and Banyuls, and from those two centres covered quite a stretch of coast. This activity has reinforced our feeling of last year, which was that the stretch of coastline known as the Côte Vermeille, is truly one of the great glories of the Pyrénées Orientales, but really only appreciable from the water. We have ventured further south into Spanish waters this year, discovering perhaps the finest bay yet – the Platja de Garbet, south of the worryingly-named town of Colera, (where I see there is a Platja dels Morts).

On the way down there we stopped, as last year, under one of the high, black cliffs on either side of Port Bou, and marvelled again at the flight of the rock- and cave-nesting swifts as they fly out into the sun and over the water. It is a wonderful experience to be swimming in the silken waters, with screaming swifts hurtling above you. While relaxing later in the bobbing boat, staring up at the vertical cliffs, which must be at least two hundred feet high, I tried to watch individual birds carefully and estimate their wingspan, an almost impossible task as they hurtle overhead. The point was that I was convinced that I had seen white on some of the birds, which must mean that they were alpine swifts, with a wingspan of some 21 inches according to my book. Common swifts there certainly were in numbers, too, making a very fine spectacle.

Elsewhere, with a lower, more vegetated and less rocky shore, I was able to watch and contrast the more fluttery flight of sand martins as they patrolled the crest of the escarpment in search of insects. Several times this year I have confirmed my feeling that all these hirundines choose to nest in busy places, where there is lots of life around, including lots of traffic, which they do not appear to mind. This has been confirmed in Perpignan, Sorède, St. Nazaire and the main street of our own village of Le Pont (Reynes), where the calls and flight of swifts, swallows and house martins entertain you as you wait for a bus. By contrast, in our normally quiet suburb, (where it seems to me, the houses still offer adequate ledges for nesting) few birds are actually resident although plenty may be seen high overhead on a calm evening. Perhaps they do feel some real affinity with old centres of population and human activity?

We have been in the water a great deal, with Martine, of course, properly under it, me pottering along gently on the surface. The great sighting this year has been our first octopus; Martine in fact saw two, on different days, but I actually managed to view the second which was a great thrill. He (Martine promptly christened it "Oscar" so it has to be "he " – sad, I know!), was very well camouflaged, and aware of our presence but in no way suggested real alarm, just moving gently away. They have a strange, amorphous, flowing motion, visibly changing shape as they glide over and around the rocks, a characteristic which may be intended to confuse a predator.

Oscar

Other sightings have been of fish, and we continue to be impressed by the richness of these clear waters. Martine has again been engaged in attempting underwater photography – something of a hit or miss, as it is impossible, while swimming, to see through the viewfinder. Some have, despite this, come out rather well, and a few new ones have been placed in her gallery of photos, while others accompany this text (thanks, as ever, Lesley!). We have seen, as last year, lots of saddled seabream, white and annular bream, as well as the pretty salema, (all of which are pictured here). The two peacock wrasses, the five-spotted and rainbow wrasses, painted comber, and the blue damselfish, also seen and listed by Martine, have so far eluded the camera. Lots of anchovies, too!

Saddled Sea Bream

White Bream

Salema and Bream

As for seabirds, as last year, we have only seen gulls and cormorants, apart from one hot, hazy, lazy afternoon as we made our way back to Argelès, when a young gannet, dark above and white below, followed the good ship Puffin, occasionally halting to make its vertical dive. As we know, there is plenty down there to feed it, and I remain very surprised at how few birds we have seen out on these enchanting waters.

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Another Wee Boating Blog

29/8/2014

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by Robin Noble

Martine having duly returned, we went out again in the boat yesterday, a truly lovely day. We drove that extra little bit, and launched at Banyuls. As usual, we pottered about, moored for a while and swam, and generally had a wonderful time looking around. We went further south than we have before, down the coast to Port Bou and slightly further. The main benefit of going further south is that the coast simply gets more amazing as you go. Down there, there are some astonishingly contorted crags, some stacks and caves, but the main thing to note is that the rock itself seems to get blacker and more dramatic the further south you go.

It still seems to be metamorphic rock, like the coast nearer Collioure, and you can see more clearly the complex and folded nature of its structure. Folds and faults and igneous intrusions are all visible, just all done in black! A few photos will illustrate the grandeur of this rock scenery.

And, as I indicated, there are small caves; and in the small caves, right on the water of the translucent Mediterranean, there are swifts, cave-dwelling swifts. As far as I can see, these must be the ordinary swift (martinet noir/ apus apus), as even in the intense sunlight, they looked very dark with no significantly lighter patches under the chin. Even though I knew that swifts are as much rock-dwellers as dwellers among buildings, it was thrilling to see them issue from the caves in these black cliffs into the bright sunlight, flying in screaming groups over the shining sea.

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Midsummer Blog (well almost!)

25/6/2014

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by Robin Noble (photography by Martine Howard)

I am writing this on an extraordinary afternoon, with the thunder rolling endlessly around Vallespir. We have had several humid days, and they have been warm, too, warmer than at the same time last year, fairly hot, most people seem to agree, for around Midsummer. It will be interesting to see how July and August work out!

We recently made one visit back to the Etang: the flamingos were certainly still present in numbers, which must prove that they do breed there. Sadly, they were, as so often, on the far side and really out of range of my binoculars, so I have no idea whether they had young. Two black swans were still there, without cygnets, and we also saw a few of the wonderful great-crested grebes, a grey heron, and a few egrets. Most remarkable to us was a huge flock of coots, more than I had ever seen together anywhere, in the middle distance. Again, there was no chance to tell if they had young among their numbers. It all goes to reinforce our view that this Etang (and the many others in the Roussillon) form a very important part of the natural landscape which surrounds us. And on the way into the hide, I had a quick, but perfect view of the red-eyed Sardinian Warbler, of which I knew nothing at all before I saw Isobel’s lovely photo.

When we have felt it too hot and humid on land, we have taken to the sea, which has been delightful. Our wee boat ("Puffin"!), lives in our garage, and it takes little more than half an hour to tow her to the slipway at the Argelès basin. From there, chugging along at a pleasant, and ecologically friendly, speed, we reckon to reach Collioure in little over six minutes, Port Vendres in about another six, and to round the craggy rocks of Cap Béar in about 20 all told. This stretch of the coast is really best seen from the water, and although I still fail to see from where the description: "Cote Vermeille" really derives, it is a handsome piece of coastline, with splendidly contorted crags of metamorphic rock.

Recently, we ventured as far as the Marine Nature Reserve south of Banyuls. You are not meant to anchor casually in this clearly-demarcated stretch of water, but there is, at this time of year at least, adequate provision in the form of substantial buoys to which you can attach your boat. We were fortunate to arrive at a relatively quiet time, and managed to take possession of a buoy which was quite close in to the rocks, beneath a magnificent, jagged, overhanging cliff. When we arrived, the sea was quiet and inviting, not quite the ultimate "glassy calm", but silken-smooth.

I love being in the water, but want to stay firmly on the surface, whereas Martine, on the other hand, must actually really be part fish, and loves being under it, for as long as possible. So I swam around for a while, rejoicing in the clean coolness of the water, then returned to the boat, and watched the sea idly as I dried off in the sun. Looking over the side, the first thing to strike me here is always the clarity of the water, in itself a real achievement when you consider that there is a significant human population on this stretch of coast. A few fish were obviously enjoying the shade cast by the boat: they were a medium grey, tinged with a slight yellow when in the sunlight, with a pronounced black and white patch back by the tail. Their young, paler but with the black and white equally pronounced, had been swimming inquisitively around my legs a few days before, when I stood in a lovely small bay just around Cap Béar. Reference to a colour chart we had recently bought made us decide that these are probably the Saddled Seabream (oblada melanura).

Martine, meanwhile, had been snorkelling around the rocks, and had been having a wonderful time. She had been trying out a small underwater camera, and playing games of hide-and-seek with (other!) fish around the rocks and in the weedy gullies, trying to take pictures of them. She said it was quite difficult, as she was trying to look through her mask, through a tiny viewfinder, at little fish that were scooting about! Only later, on the computer, could we really assess the results, and a few of them follow this blog, along with attempted identification where we are sure of it. All told, that day we had a wonderful time at sea, but more importantly it is clear that there is, out there, an underwater landscape of some richness, and - most important of all - it is being well looked after.

Creatures of the Deep - Pyrenees Marine Reserve - Banyuls

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Shore Birds & Sea Creatures

11/5/2014

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by Robin Noble

I recently realised that despite calling ourselves "Mediterranean Pyrenees", we had so far said rather little about the sea or even the shore. Much of the latter is, of course, simply beach, that long sandy littoral of the Roussillon Plain, which might be assumed to have little or no wildlife interest. But in places along it, I have heard and occasionally seen the ringed plover, which lays its eggs almost anywhere along the edge of the beach. Where there are freshwater channels, they are slow and still, almost dammed by the wave-driven sands, and in such places I have heard, and again briefly, spied the common sand-piper - a good place to look for this attractive little wader might be the exit channel from the Étang I mentioned in an earlier blog. Their plaintive piping was always one of the confirming signs that spring had arrived in the Scottish Highlands, and I was pleased to hear one here in the first week of May; this should be too late for birds which would be migrating further north, and I presume that they must breed here.

I am not sure, however, whether I should apply that logic to another bird I saw that same day. On the water, you tend often just to see cormorants and gulls, and I am afraid that I must confess that I have rather little interest in gulls - (ok, so I'm shallow, sorry!) - but one rather strange "gull" caught my eye that very day, when it started to hover above the water. To my great delight, it was, of course, an osprey - sadly it caught no fish while I was watching it. Was this a very late migrant, perhaps a young one, a non-breeder, having a gap year around the Mediterranean, rather than in Scotland or Scandinavia? I have seen them before in this area, from the train as it heads north towards Montpellier, but this one does seem unexpectedly late.

That same day, in a number of places, I was delighted to see flocks of one of the birds with which I must confess to being obsessed - the bee-eaters! They can be so tricky to see properly, but on this occasion I had several good, if very quick views.

From the coast, more particularly from the higher Côte Vermeille we have seen significant gatherings of gulls, indulging in some sort of feeding-frenzy, which at the very least suggests there are quite a few fish on which to feed! We have only had, I think, six boat trips so far, which hardly makes us authorities on what there is out there, but it has been our impression that there are quite a few fish around. Apart from the feeding-frenzies just noted, the clear water in some of the bays has shown up some fish, (of species quite unknown to us!), and on one day last summer, we had regular sightings of one of the oddest creatures I have ever seen. It seemed to have a blunt, almost "flattened" body, with two prominent fins set far back, and was breaching regularly, managing to come quite a few feet out of the water. The National Geographic website suggests that these were sunfish, and remarks that they breach in this fashion to rid themselves of external parasites as they crash back into the water.

But one of our (potentially) most interesting sightings was from the shore - and a real lesson to me! We were in Collioure, on a lovely day, having a delightful lunch in the open - as one does! From our restaurant, we had a view out to sea, and at some stage during the meal, most of the diners became aware of activity out towards the eastern horizon. People stood up, pointed, said: "Dauphin!", and, right enough, some dark, big, sea-creatures were moving from north to south. They may well have been dolphins (but quite big ones if so), but we could not really tell. You see, there are certainly interesting creatures out there, but you see them better if your binoculars are around your neck - and not left in the car!

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Late Spring Seabird Blog

Up-and-down Blog

End-of-Season Blog

Cool, Wet Blog

Another Wee Boating Blog

Midsummer Blog (well almost!)

Shore Birds & Sea Creatures

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